12/20/2012

Seasons Greetings

It is not uncommon for me to select theme music for some posts, the most recent being from the lost decade of the 1970s. Well, it was not entirely a lost decade, the founding of Van Halen is the one redeeming quality of that ten year expanse of time. Clocking in at a mere 1 minute and 42 seconds, Eddie Van Halen shredding out Eruption single handled saved the entire decade.

The theme song for this post however could not be the more polar opposite of Eruption. It's My Party and I'll Cry if I Want To goes back to 1963, and this video is from 1965.

This video proves that lipsyching is actually older than most people reading this blog and not an invention of modern pop stars. So how does this song relate to this post? Well, "It's my blog and I'll rant if I want to . . . rant if I want to."

Yes this is a bike blog, and while this rant is not entirely bike focused, it does overlap, and as a bonus I will give a preview of a future post. Aren't you lucky! Cue the rant music . . .

I am not a huge fan of holiday gift giving, but I do enjoy the tradition of holiday greeting cards - mostly. There is one holiday card feature that makes me want to shout, "Bah Humbug!" Take a look at the top of a greeting card I recently received -

So what's so bad about this you ask? GLITTER! I hate the stuff, it gets EVERYWHERE. The glitter starts on my hands of course and then everything I touch within a few hours is vitimized by the stuff. After opening the card pictured above, for days I found glitter on almost everything owned. It was on my jacket, pants, glasses, shoes, helmet, handlebar grips, bag, and even inside of one of my headphones for crying out loud!

It's the gift that keeps on giving, but in the most annoying way possible. I am sure if you were to track my commute you would find a trail of glitter. The stuff is pervasive! If I were President, the first item on my agenda would be passing a law making glitter illegal. Okay, rant over and now on to a preview for a future post . . .

Readers are welcome and encouraged to guess why I am going to feature this picture in an upcoming post.

You've figured out that 8-speed is the price-performance sweet spot for city bikes. It's cheap and durable compared to 10/11 speed, and You'll never spend enough on replacements to justify a Nexus hub.

Echoing the observation about the #3 cog (and the #4 cog looks like it's next).

And if I may be permitted to expand on the rant, most of today's "cyclists" will allow themselves to be upsold to a new bike because "8-speed cogs are passé; all the new bikes have this new 10-speed setup" with the end result that a lot of perfectly good bikes end up as yard-sale fodder.